Take Him Away
by writer with no words
Summary: When Roland is taken to be unwound on the fateful day at Happy Jack Harvest Camp, he has one last chance at surviving: the roof and Risa. This is a one-shot describing what happens during the bully's last betrayal.


**Author's Note: Hi everyone! This is my first fanfic for the novel 'Unwind.' I just finished reading it today and I absolutely loved it, but I didn't think Roland got any justice at all and I spent the whole book feeling sorry for him, to the point of crying at his unwinding. This is a scene just before that, taken when he enters the Chop Shop. Please review and tell me what you think!**

**Take Him Away**

**Roland  
**

Once the door to the Chop Shop slides shut behind Roland and the group of people restraining him, leaving them all in ironically dead silence, his screams of protest come to an abrupt close like the sounds from outside. Although his mind is screaming at him to protest, to say something, the rest of his body refuses to comply. His mouth hangs open as they pull him towards the waiting sterile table, and he looks helplessly around waiting for a way to escape that doesn't exist.

Suddenly he sees something and it gives him the hope that maybe there is such thing as escape from here: the steps to the roof of the building. Immediately his thoughts are drawn to Risa. _Risa_. She would help him get out, wouldn't she? Without thinking of the consequences, Roland tears out of the grip on his arms .The pressure on his limbs had been loosening ever since they had entered, because what could you do once the doors slid shut on you? It gives him the opportunity to pull away from them and begin to run up the stairs to the roof.

He hears shouting behind him but he pumps his arms to get as far away as possible from his captors. He only needed a minute. Surely a minute would make everything okay.

When he comes to a stop at the roof level the band that had been steadily playing - oblivious to the commotion occurring underneath them - stops abruptly and they stare at him, their mouths open in shock. From the looks of it, this has never happened before. Most of his fellow Unwinds look at him in pity, unaware of the terrible things he did to deserve his place here. They must see him as a wide-eyed boy, trying one last time to escape his unavoidable fate. Only one person looks at him with a burning hatred.

Risa stands behind the keyboard she was playing before the interruption, clenching her jaw and trying to hold back from throwing herself at him and killing him before he can even get unwound. And in that instant Roland knows that he is not going to be saved. Everything begins to move in slow motion as he steps forward towards her, pleading for another chance.

"Risa, please, I'm sorry for everything. They're going to take me apart down there, please help me!" He's screaming now, no longer caring how crazy he must look. Because being in therapy is nothing compared to his planned fate. The girl in front of him steps back slightly, looking afraid at such a change in her tormentor's personality. She doesn't understand, she doesn't know.

A new, rough looking set of guards comes up the stairs now, instantly locating their target and grabbing Roland with a grip he can't escape. There are four guards and they each grab one of his limbs, lifting him off the ground and spreading him out so that he can't fight back. He can still scream though, and he does, pleading once again for another day, _another chance_. He doesn't want to think that very soon the arms and legs that are being held will no longer be even attached to him. The thought both disturbs and petrifies him and he struggles even more, trying one last time to get through to Risa.

"We apologise for the disturbance, miss." One of the guards holding him says to her. "Do you know this Unwind?" This is the moment of truth, the moment that could either give him new life or take it away from him. Everyone on the roof falls silent and grows still, wondering what is about to happen. But Roland already knows how this is going to end for him, he knew as soon as he saw Risa's face. He is not surprised.

"No, he's scaring me. Please, just take him away."

He knows his face falls in a look of utter betrayal because Risa feels ashamed enough to look away after she speaks. For once the young man, nearly eighteen years old, knows how it must have felt for Connor and Risa to be betrayed by him only days before. Knowing there is no longer any point in struggling, he stays rigid as he is carried back down the stairs, aware of exactly how this is going to play out. But Risa's words cause a memory to resurface on his consciousness and as much as he fights it, it takes over.

The day it all began. At home it had been as if he was walking on eggshells, what with the fateful events of the week before. Roland's stepfather had beaten his mother, and he had punched him in a moment of fury. It did nothing more than break his nose – he still sported a bandage over the injury – but she saw it differently. Roland's mother saw a son, one that she never really wanted, overcome by his anger. He had fitted the Unwind description perfectly. _Unsalvageable. Too angry to be released into society._

He had answered a knock at the door and two policemen were standing there, one of them holding handcuffs. For a moment he was sure that they had come for his stepfather, but then both he and his mother appeared beside him and handed them a slip of paper. A signed Unwind Notice. He had screamed and sworn at them as he was taken away, much like how he had been taken from his dormitory this morning. They had held him in front of his mother by the arms, asking if she wanted to give him one final goodbye.

"_Please, just take him away_._"_

Back on the ground floor of the Chop Shop, Roland is carried to the bed, which he hadn't noticed the restraints on until now, and is tied down. He looks down at himself and sees his shirt sleeve has ridden up, revealing his tattoo of the tiger shark. It looks back at him and for a second he can see pity in its eyes too, wondering how he turned from a ten year old boy with a broken arm to a young man lying on a table about to be unwound. He wonders briefly where this arm is going to end up. Who will look at this in the future and wonder whose body this arm was originally attached to and how he ended up here. Now he is truly scared.

As they strip him and prepare him for _harvesting_, rubbing his neck with alcohol to prepare for the numbing injection he knows is coming, Roland wonders what he did wrong in his life. Why he deserved this, to be pulled apart piece by piece. Why him and not those of his peers, the ones that stole from shops down the road every day and yet the idea of unwinding them never came up. _Why him._

He doesn't realise that there are tears streaming down his face until a nurse approaches his immobile body and gently blotches his face with a towel. Roland doesn't know why the next words leave his mouth at a time like this, but they do and he can't take them back once they are said.

"I'm afraid. Please, I'm so afraid." He whispers as they inject a serum into the side of his neck. The nurse looks at him with a pitying expression, almost as if she can see through to his soul and see that he is not so bad after all.

"I understand," She replies quietly, "And no one is going to take you away." And although that's not the phrase he asked for, it comforts him, and for a second, he is almost not afraid of what happens next.


End file.
